Rocket fire from Gaza could destroy Israel — in 4 million years

Paul Woodward11/17/2012

During the 2008-2009 war on Gaza, Michael Oren, now Israel’s ambassador to the US wrote that Gaza rockets and mortars being fired at southern Israel were “more than a crude attempt to kill and terrorize civilians — they were expressions of a genocidal intent.”

Phan Nguyen has crunched the numbers in order to figure out how long it would take for that genocidal intent to be realized, based on the current rate of fatalities caused by projectiles launched from Gaza. Admittedly, Nguyen opts for a maximal definition of genocide — the elimination of the entire Jewish population of Israel — but based on the current ratio of rockets and mortars fired and fatalities, it would require 4,477,714,286 attacks, and 4,477,714 years.

The fact is, over the last twelve years an average of two Israelis a year have been killed by rocket and mortar fire. Whatever the risks of premature death might be for most Israelis, being killed by militants in Gaza is probably the least among them.

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News, analysis and opinion with occasional editorials by Paul Woodward.